The #6 film on the list of the biggest movies of 2023 so far — ahead of Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Knock at the Cabin, and even Shazam! Fury of the Gods, is Cocaine Bear. Now it is extremely difficult to boil this epic tone poem of cinema down to a brief synopsis, but it’ll do my best: It’s about a bear that’s on cocaine.
(Okay that was less difficult than I initially imagined.)
And now, after a surprisingly successful run in theaters where this bear grossed $63 million in the U.S. and another $20 million worldwide, Cocaine Bear is headed to streaming. The Universal Pictures release will premiere on Peacock one week from today.
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The film, directed by Elizabeth Banks, is supposedly based on a true story (with a fair amount of invention, I would wager) about a bear that got into a lost stash of drugs. In addition to Cocaine Bear (as himself), the film also stars Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and the late, great Ray Liotta in one of his final roles.
In addition to drawing significant audiences to theaters, Cocaine Bear did surprisingly well with critics; it currently sits with a 67 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Here is the film’s official synopsis:
Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild thriller finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow … and blood.
Cocaine Bear premieres on Peacock on April 14.
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